Seeing his mistake almost immediately, the bearded aviator broke his dive by zooming upward. Again Dorothy’s plane dove for his tail and right there he made his second error.
Instead of gaining altitude and position by making an Immelman turn, which consists of a half-roll on the top of a loop, he pulled back his stick sharply, simultaneously giving the Mystery Plane full right rudder. The result was an abrupt stall and a fall off, and his amphibian emerged from the resultant dive headed in the direction from which he had first appeared.
Dorothy sent her bus spiralling downward, while Bill simply nosed his Ryan into a steeper climb. By the time the Mystery Plane levelled off from its split-S turn it had lost over a thousand feet. Granted he was headed for home, if that had been his intention; now he was placed in the worst possible situation with regard to his opponents. For instead of one, both planes had attained positions above him.
For the next few minutes the man in the smuggler’s plane did his best to out-maneuver the elusive pair whose motors roared above his head like giant bees attacking an enemy. Never was he given a chance to better his position or to gain altitude. Every time he maneuvered to place one of the planes within line of fire from his machine gun, the other would effectually block the move; the menacing plane would sheer off at a tangent and its partner, crowding down upon his tail, would hurl forth a smoke bomb. By the time he floundered through the cloud, his antagonists would be back in their relative positions, again, the one directly above his tail plane, the other slightly behind him to the right.
The bearded aviator knew that he was being outclassed at every move, that gradually they were forcing him down to a point where he must land or crash.
Both Dorothy and Bill knew exactly when the man in the plane below guessed their purpose. For with a sudden burst of speed he shot ahead, streaking in the direction of North Stamford like a ghost in torment.
“We’ve got every advantage but one,” mused Dorothy, widening her throttle in pursuit. “He knows where he’s going—and we don’t. He’s up to some trick, I’ll bet.”
That her thoughts were prophetic was made apparent almost immediately. By shutting off his engine and by kicking his rudder alternately right and left with comparatively slow and heavy movements, the smuggler pilot sent his plane’s nose swinging from side to side. This evolution, known as fish-tailing, he executed without banking or dropping the nose to a steeper angle. Its purpose is to cut down speed and to do so as rapidly as possible.
The Mystery Plane slowed down as though a brake had been applied, sideslipped to the left over a line of trees and leveled off above a field enclosed by a dilapidated stone fence.
“Confound!” exclaimed Dorothy, with a glance behind. “He’s going to land and both Bill and I have overshot the field!”